What’s the Fastest Broadband for High-Speed Gaming?

Some internet connections are better than others when it comes to gaming. Today, gaming is no longer a niche hobby but rather a multi-million dollar pursuit. With many games evolving, online connectivity is increasingly becoming unavoidable, whether a user depends on it for buying new games, multiplayer or simply downloading day one patches. If you are looking for a high-speed gaming broadband plan, speed is a factor you will want to consider. For you to get the edge to online gaming, the connection of your broadband has to be highly responsive and come with a set of super-fast upload and download speeds. Whether the purpose is for PC or console, various providers are equipped properly for gaming. Some of the fastest broadband options you could consider are Sky, Virgin Media and Plusnet.

How Much Speed do you need?

The best way to choose broadband for gaming is by considering the upload speed, download speed, jitter, packet loss, and latency. Fast internet connections give you high speeds when updating or downloading games, especially if you need to begin the barrel at 50GB download. With an average connection together with ADSL2, it could take about 12 hours to download a 50 GB game. With patience and a decent ADSL connection, you can download most games in a day. Otherwise, it would be more reasonable to get a top tier NBN for faster downloads of about 100Mbps.

Upload Speed: To get the most out of a high-speed gaming, the upload speed should be of major concern than the download speed. It is a measure of the amount of information passed from the console to the internet and is measured in Mbps. The higher the number achieved, the more the upload speed you get. For instance, Plusnet’s 76Mb fibre is one of the fastest broadband for uploads, giving an average speed of more than 16Mb.

Download Speed: This is the amount of data sent to your console from the internet. With a high download speed, it becomes easy to get downloadable content faster without affecting the game unless you are working with a poor broadband. Sky broadband, for instance, offers a download speed of between 20Mbit/s and 76Mbit/s.

Latency and Ping: Latency is the time taken for data packets to get to your device from a certain server while ping is the time taken for a data packet to reach the server from your device and back. Due to the real-time communication aspect, both of them are very important for gaming. If you are racing against other gamers, for instance, one second out of sync could potentially ruin your game. A relatively slow DSL connection can also offer good gaming as long as there is low latency to cut the lag down.

Reliable Broadband is what you need to stay in the Game

Although packet loss and low latency are vital for online game responsiveness, they become ineffective the moment you are automatically forced out of a game due to lack of internet connectivity. A dropped connection ruins a game fast, the reason you need a reliable broadband connection. When choosing an ideal provider, look for one who demonstrates a limited number of disruptions each day, and in the case of challenges, the problem is solved quickly. Although most broadband providers are never honest about this detail, Ofcom research that was conducted independently shows that Sky Broadband is the least likely to experience a disconnect. The others said to be reliable for both PC and Mac gaming are Virgin Media, Plusnet, BT and EE. You can only get the best experience by choosing packages with high download rates, no traffic management and steady connections.

How effective is Mobile Broadband?

Here, the broadband uses phone signals to connect you to the internet, which is normally completed with either an MIFI device or a dongle to deliver broadband connection wirelessly to different devices simultaneously. What’s important is to focus on the download allowance despite being smaller than a standard broadband connection. For instance, Xbox live downloads can measure up to 55GB and beyond before receiving or sending data during an online game.

Since most games are downloaded from Steam, OnLive and other online game stores, it is vital to have a fast download speed. The higher the speed, the faster the downloads for high-speed gaming.